November 17, 2016
Walker Wednesday
Walker Wednesday
The Walking Dead, Season 7, episode 4
November 13, 2016
This was a super-sized episode of The Walking Dead, and when the Saviors show up at Alexandria (early), not even a week has passed since Negan killed Glenn and Abraham. And Daryl is with them as the help. He wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, and even when Negan gave him permission to plead his case for staying, Daryl didn’t utter a word. Different people are going to have different ideas as to why he chose to remain silent, but to me it was part protecting the group and part him feeling like he didn’t deserve to come back. He has enough guilt over Glenn and he’s been through a lot at the hands of the Saviors, then he shows up in Alexandria to find out Maggie “is dead.” I can’t even imagine how Daryl is feeling after that bomb was dropped on him, but to me it seems very possible that he’s going back with the Saviors because he feels like he deserves to be punished just a little bit more.
While the Saviors were in Alexandria, Dwight made Rosita and Spencer go fetch Daryl’s motorcycle. Dwight is a character I’ll be interested to watch develop. He’s the bad guy, but I think he’s biding his time. What the motorcycle is all about is a puzzle, though. This guy is in charge of Daryl’s torture – or indoctrination if that’s what you want to call it – but he’s doing it out of his own sense of survival. Dwight knows that if he crosses Negan, he’s not the only one who will pay. Negan may think Sherry is “super hot,” but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t slit her throat and trade her in for another woman if he thought it would teach a lesson. Dwight knows this, and he’s playing along, but I think that when the moment is right, he very well could be the group’s biggest ally and Daryl’s only chance of getting out of there alive.
Spencer made it pretty clear that he blames Rick for everything that’s happened with the Saviors. He told Rosita that the group should have made a deal with the Saviors when they had the chance. Problem with that is, things wouldn’t have turned out much different. Yes, perhaps Abraham and/or Glenn would still be alive, but someone else would have died in some other way. Negan would have thought it was necessary the moment he interacted with Rick, because Rick is a man who doesn’t go down easy and Negan is good at reading people. But Spencer is one of those characters who doesn’t learn easily. No matter what Rick does, no matter how things go or how long they live or what Rick gets them through, Spencer is always going to think he could be a better leader. He’s wrong, but that’s how it’s going to be until something major happens to kick him in the ass and change his mind.
While in Alexandria, the Saviors were nice enough to leave all the food, but they took every single gun Rick and his group had. All of them. Rick even showed he was trustworthy by retrieving the gun Michonne had stashed away, which happened to not be on the inventory. Yes, he could have left it where it was, but I think his reasons for turning it over to Negan were two-fold. One, to show he was on board, but also so he could try to get Daryl back. It didn’t work, but I think it was the right move. After all, one gun isn’t going to do them a whole lot of good at this point, so why not add it to the ones Negan already took?
The Saviors also took most of the mattresses in Alexandria. Now, I didn’t understand this at the time. For one, Negan’s group is pretty established, so I figured they probably had their own beds already. Also, it seems like it would be fairly easy to replace the mattresses. I mean, odds are not many people raided mattress stores at the end of the world, plus every house you pass is going to have a couple beds up for grabs. But it all makes sense when Michonne discovers a pile of burned mattresses at the end of the episode. It didn’t have a thing to do with the beds. It was about letting everyone in Alexandria know where they stand. Not everyone was there to see what happened to Glenn and Abraham, and to many of the people in that town, losing the guns won’t have much of an impact. A bed, though… They’ll think about that every time they lay down to go to sleep. And the Saviors left the burned mattresses close enough that someone from the town was sure to find them, kind of like a big f-you for everyone in the town. Smart. Negan continues to surprise me with his psychological mind games.
My biggest concern during this episode, though, was Judith. I have this awful feeling that she is going to be of great interest to Negan when he finds out about her. For one, he already has it in for Rick, and after Carl decided to be a badass during this episode, he probably has it in for Rick Jr. too. What better way to make sure these two do as they’re told than to take Judith? The second Negan sees how much this baby means to them, she’ll be gone.
Secondly, we know from last week’s episode that Negan is trying to get Dwight’s wife pregnant. At first I thought them throwing this into the story was just so they could emphasize how bad things are for Dwight, but now I think it might be foreshadowing things to come. Why Negan wants a baby is a mystery, but it has been established that he does. Thirdly, I found it very interesting that Judith was conveniently out of sight when the Saviors where around. You would have thought that the existence of a baby would have come up in some way when Negan’s men were searching the houses, but nope. Not a peep out of baby Judith. Finally, we got a major bomb dropped on us during this episode, something viewers have been speculating about since season two. Judith is Shane’s baby. Rick knows it, apparently he’s known it all along, but he made a special point of saying, “I know Judith isn’t mine. I know it. I love her. She’s my daughter. But she isn’t mine.” Why after all this time would they choose this particular moment to bring Shane up unless they wanted to emphasize something about Judith? They wouldn’t. Writers always have a reason.
What else happened in this episode… Michonne sneaks out to practice shooting and apparently she’s a really bad shot. After all this time during the apocalypse, you’d think she would have learned how to shoot just a little better. Was she planning to kill Negan when he showed up? Seems like it, which may be another reason Rick took the rifle. Also, why did Rick think he needed to tell Negan that Maggie died? To protect her or to cover up the fact that they are allies with the Hilltop? And is she out of the woods? Did she have surgery? Is the baby okay? Where’s Sasha? I’m not quite sure about all that yet, so I guess we’ll just have to see how it all plays out. Either way, things are going to get worse for Maggie (and the whole group) before they get better.
